ROLLING IN THE DEEP

How do you enable Onlyness in teams? By having their backs, no matter what.

I will be starting a new job in about ten days. And I want to put into practice the ideas you wrote about in a “Matter of Trust.”  

My goal is two-fold.

I want to be myself in this new role. I know from experience that my success in any job —and the value the organization gets from my work— is strongly and directly correlated with how open I am and the extent to which I bring my Onlyness to work. 

And, I want to create an environment where every person on the team (and everyone else I work with!) can feel free and safe to bring their Onlyness to work. I know this means believing in people building trust and empathy, but I don't know what all this means and what I still need to learn and practice. 

To distill this into a question, how can I build a team and an environment where Onlyness thrives as a leader who is new to an organization? I will be building a significant function in a newly formed subsidiary of a large corporation. I will have one team member in place on day one, so I will build my team mostly from scratch.

Hey there, Builder: 

What is the opposite of Onlyness? 

What is it that decenters one’s own ability to add value, so we’re not ourselves at work? 

The answer? Conformity.